This sketch grew out of 2020, a year when fear consumed me. It seeped through my walls, through my body, until even breathing felt impossible. I forced air in and out using Wim Hof breathing techniques, as if training to survive the inevitable. I cracked under the weight of it all, anxiety splitting me open, while staring at an unlikely newspaper headline of a pangolin.
Pen and Ink Pangolin illustration $50 AUD (Not including postage) Original 1/1 artwork comes with a certificate of authenticity
WTF is a Pangolin? It’s one of the world’s great misfits. A mammal covered in armor made of keratin scales, the same stuff as your fingernails. It curls into a perfect ball when threatened, like a Jurassic pine cone basically saying: “You’re not getting in.” This little armored drifter became my symbol of resilience, a reminder that sometimes the strongest thing you can do is roll up tight and outlast the storm.
Of course, the pangolin got unfairly dragged into the chaos of that year. It was the “weird kid” blamed simply for looking different, for being unusual. And as artists, we know what that feels like. We wear our strangeness on our sleeves, and the world points fingers when it doesn’t understand. But look closely at the pangolin: it’s not a villain, it’s a miracle. A solitary, ant-devouring guardian of the ecosystem. An ultra-cute, alien-faced wanderer that has been quietly surviving on this planet far longer than our fragile systems ever have.
The more I studied it, the more I obsessed over it, the more I saw myself, and all of us weird kids, reflected in its scales. To fear the uncommon is easy. To dismiss it, to scapegoat it, to label it as “other.” But if you sit with it, sketch it, let it stare back at you with those dark, gentle eyes, you realise the truth: the uncommon isn’t something to fear. It’s something to invite in for coffee, to learn from, to celebrate.
That’s why the pangolin has carved out its rightful place in my Uncommon Animals of the Alphabet. Not as a cautionary tale, but as a reminder: strength doesn’t always roar. Sometimes it curls up, endures, and waits for the world to stop pointing fingers.
Kids Book Illustrator Andy C Marshall 